Keycard lock
lock operated by a keycard
A keycard lock is a lock operated by a keycard, a flat, rectangular plastic card. The card typically, but not always, has identical dimensions to that of a credit card, that is ID-1 format. The card stores a physical or digital pattern that the door mechanism accepts before disengaging the lock. Tor Sørnes was credited with the invention in the 1970s.
There are several common types of keycards in use, including the mechanical holecard, barcode, magnetic stripe, Wiegand wire embedded cards, smart card (embedded with a read/write electronic microchip), RFID, and NFC proximity cards.
Keycards are frequently used in hotels as an alternative to mechanical keys.
The first commercial use of key cards was to raise and lower the gate at automated parking lots where users paid a monthly fee.
Overview
Keycard systems operate by physically moving detainers in the locking mechanism with the insertion of the card, by shining LEDs through a pattern of holes in the card and detecting the result, by swiping or inserting a magnetic stripe card, or in the case of RFID or NFC cards, merely being brought into close proximity to a sensor. Keycards may also serve as ID cards, or as part of an NFC system, have the code transmitted to a mobile phone to be placed into a digital wallet system such as Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, negating the need for a physical keycard.
Many electronic access control locks use a Wiegand interface to connect the card swipe mechanism to the rest of the electronic entry system.
The public source identifies “Keycard lock” as lock operated by a keycard. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Keycard, lock and operated.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6398242. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Keycard lock” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.